Flamingos. The national bird of the Bahamas, featured in the nation’s Coat of Arms. But sadly no longer available to view on Abaco**, despite sporadic attempts to reintroduce them as breeding birds on the island (the last, I believe, about 15 years ago). By the end of the c19, numbers were already small. During his field trip in 1886, naturalist F.H.Herrick noted“The rare flamingo is now reduced to a colony of a few hundred on Abaco, where, as I was informed by an old settler, they numbered thousands several years ago, and similarly the beautiful tropic bird, which is hunted chiefly for food, is being gradually exterminated”.

Ornithologist Charles Cory noted none on his visit to Abaco in 1891 (though he does seem to have been concentrating on smaller birds). In 1905, naturalist Glover M. Allen reported his…